Talk:Provincetown, Massachusetts

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Where's the gayest spot in America...and possibly the entire world?

Today, cities in the United States are being ranked by what's called a gay-index. The number is based on a scale of 100 (100 being the national average). Therefore, if your city has a gay index of 63, then it is considered 37% below the national average. Likewise, a city with a gay-index of 190 is 90% higher than the national average.

To give you an idea of where todays gays & lesbians are residing in America, the following cities in the WEST are listed below.

West:

720 - Palm Springs, CA

479 - San Francisco, CA

341 - Seattle, WA

239 - Portland, OR

216 - Denver, CO

201 - Santa Fe, NM

193 - Salt Lake City, UT

186 - San Diego, CA

168 - Los Angeles, CA

159 - Pheonix, AZ

123 - Las Vegas, NV

99 - Honolulu, HI

78 - Colorado Springs, CO

47 - Cheyenne, WY

Yes America, Palm Springs CA has quickly grown to be a center for gays & lesbians in CA. This doesn't mean that Palm Springs has the MOST gay/lesbian people...it just means that, per capita, Palm Springs wins by ratio of men:men and/or women:women households. San Francisco is still heavily populated. Being the party town it is, you'd think that Vegas would attract a more alternative lifestyle. Nope. Colorado Springs surprises me too. Only an hour or so away from Denver and it's second to last on our list of cities in the west.

Moving on to the Midwest. The only state gays & lesbians seem to be thriving and surviving in our Bible Belt is TX. Comparatively speaking, living in the Midwest is about "average" for the United states. Notice that our #2 Dallas (196) in the midwest is comparable to living in Salt Lake City (193), #6 in the West.

Midwest:

287 - Minneaoplis, MN

196 - Dallas, TX

169 - Austin, TX

157 - Chicago, IL

156 - St. Louis, MO

150 - Houston, TX

145 - Kansas City, MO

108 - Milwaukee, WI

108 - Des Moines, IA

103 - Oklahoma City, OK

100 - San Antonio, TX

87 - Wichita, KS

86 - Springfield, MO

80 - Omaha, NE

Making our way North East, we have the majority of the gay & lesbian community flocking to the coast - the far north east coast at that. Notice that here, we see Provincetown (a.k.a. "P-Town") with the highest gay index of any U.S. city. Boston, Portland (Maine), and Washington D.C. all have relatively high indexes as well.

North East:

2272 - Provincetown, MA

263 - Washington, D.C.

233 - Boston, MA

225 - Portland, ME

152 - Columbus, OH

152 - New York, NY

138 - Hartford, CT

130 - Philadelphia, PA

127 - Newark, NJ

120 - Norfolk, VA

114 - Pittsburg, PA

107 - Charleston, WV

97 - Buffalo, NY

92 - Detroit, MI

Like the Midwest, the NE was pretty sparse - except for a few hot-spots. Finally, the deep south contains several cities many gays & lesbians call home.

South:

553 - Key West, FL

368 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL

300 - Atlanta, GA

211 - Orlando, FL

167 - New Orleans, LA

154 - Miami, FL

135 - Birmingham, AL

126 - Louisville, KY

125 - Nashville, TN

107 - Little Rock, AR

91 - Jackson, MS

90 - Mobile, AL

This information has been compiled and is available at http://www.epodunk.com. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.184.240.67 (talk • contribs)

Colorado Springs does not surprise me. It's home to the headquarters of Focus on the Family, who I have heard have quite a considerable influence in the town. If I wanted to move to Colorado, I know I would stay away from CS. Palm Springs doesn't surprise me either, it's home to the White Party. --Node 10:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The fact that we CARE about this? Ash Zyroil (talk) 17:32, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

NPOV

I don't like the general tone, seems much hyping involved, and a monolithic viewpoint of gays as a "community." It should be re-written as to mention the gay component, but not the rah-rah extreme currently in the article. Many gays don't think highly of P-Town, you know, due to its assocations with rampant sex and drug abuse.

MSTCrow 16:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if "most gays don't think highly ofP-town." I bet most gays in the US don't have much opinion about P-town. It's of course very well known in the New York/Boston corridor, and also elswhere among people who travel quite a lot, but even world-traveling gays in Chicago often know very little about the place. In other smaller cities, even fewer people will have a feeling one way or the other. Interlingua 03:06, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Ummm... listen. I think the real problem that you have is with your own personal definition of the phrase 'gay community'. Me, I take the phrase literally. A gay community is a number of GLBT people living in the same geographical place. Period. By that definition, P-town has a large gay community. So does Dupont Circle in DC, The Castro in SF, Greenwich Village in NYC, Broadway in Seattle, etc. Whether individuals (even a large percentage of the individuals) living in an area use drugs heavily or engage in promiscuous sex OR follow a more moderate lifestyle, a gay community is still a gay community.

Incidentally, using weasel words like 'Alot of gay people think this way' is pretty POV, don't you think? I don't remember you conducting any poll. Or if you did, you sure didn't ask me what I thought. So where do you get off saying "Gay people think this way"? when what you really mean is "I think this way"? Wandering Star 03:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

There are many ways to see and understand "community." One may be geographic, but that can be limiting. Another view is cultural -- shared values, shared understanding, and shared experiences. In this regarded the LGBT -- even in its diversity -- is most certainly a community regardless of its geographic presence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.220.59.125 (talk) 02:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I don’t agree. MSTCrow has a points. I am gay so you don’t have to be straight to think logically. Ash Zyroil (talk) 17:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Being accessible to a more world-wide audience

Commercial Street gained numerous cafes, leather shops, head shops -- every imaginable type of hip small business blossomed and flourished.

As a brit, the term "head shop" is unkown to me and is not in common usage here. perhaps a wider, more encompasing term could be used? --Brideshead 17:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Historical gay & lesbian presence in town

I wonder about In the mid-1970s members of the gay community began moving to Provincetown. Does this skip over earlier 20th century gays in a way that would be offensive to today's sensibilities?

The main notable examples that occur to me are Djuna Barnes, Tennessee Williams, Charles Demuth (more info re Demuth in Provincetown), Marsden Hartley, Edna St.Vincent Millay, Mabel Dodge?, and Louise Bryant (okay, maybe, Bryant only came out after leaving P-town with a man, but she made a splash here before that). I have certainly read somewhere that Williams had partners in town, and I would suspect that Barnes did as well. I haven't done any research yet looking for other examples and am just writing off the top of my head. I suppose if there are none, it doesn't matter. But I'm curious anyway. Can anyone provide additional examples of a historical gay presence in town prior to 1970? --Peter 15:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Follow-up to above: I didn't have to go far to find more evidence of a historical gay presence in Provincetown. The Atlantic House page here at Wikipedia says, "In 1950, Reginald "Reggie" Cabral and Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Hurst bought the A-House. Cabral, who worked as manager, soon took over full ownership and made the long discreetly gay friendly establishment openly so." Now this doesn't really contradict the statement quoted above about members of the gay community moving to Provincetown. If you believe that members of the gay community only visited the openly gay bar during the summers between the 1950s and 1970s, then the statement could still be technically true. But my personal suspicion is that that is a stretch. --Peter 01:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm changing that reference to the 1970s, which is flat out wrong. My brother moved to P-town in 1970 because it was already a place where gay people lived openly. MarkinBoston (talk) 19:39, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I’m not sure how many will be notified to this message and I realise it’s been years, but walking around with another in Provincetown 50 years ago was still no picnic. This is not a new town. It’s old. Founded in the 1700s. Generations of people still lived there. I am also speaking from experience. Ash Zyroil (talk) 17:36, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Ptown mass flag.gif

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Nausets in Provincetown?

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that the Pamets were a tribe in the Truro area and the Putanonamets in the Wellfleet area and that the Nausets were mainly from the north of Chatham north through Eastham and that there was not a large Native American presence in Provincetown before european settlement. Is that correct? Is it historically accurate to say that the Nausets were in Provincetown? I suppose it might be almost as accurate or precise as saying that the Wampanoags were in Provincetown at that time. I'm not arguing for a change - rather just pleading for historical justification. Peter (talk) 11:58, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Culture section slanted?

This paragraph under "Culture" seems to aim at making an indirect political point:

In 2003, Provincetown received a $1.95 million low interest loan from the Rural Development program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to help rebuild the town's MacMillan Pier. It primarily serves tourists and high-speed ferries that charge their passengers up to $45 per one-way trip. Between 2004 and 2007, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum[10] received four Rural Development grants and loans totalling $3 million to increase the museum's space, add climate-controlled facilities, renovate a historic sea captain's house (the Hargood House) and cover cost overruns.[11] As the mission of the Rural Development program is "To increase economic opportunity and improve the quality of life for all rural Americans",[12] the USDA considered Provincetown's residents in the 2000s to still be rural and to still require such federal assistance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.251.222.14 (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Provincetown in popular culture

Would anybody object if I removed the entire Provincetown in popular culture section? It's largely unsourced, and those bits that are sourced don't add anything of significance to the article. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:34, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm taking the lack of comment as assent. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:51, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored

P-Town was identified as a nexus of the AIDS outbreak in the early '80s, catastrophically affected, much as were Key West (where there is a similar memorial), San Francisco, Fire Island, and Greenwich Village. I'm reverting the erasure of the identification and the placement of the memorial, which are referred to even in the titles of the citations. Even searching the terms "AIDS"+ Provincetown" results in dozens of titles in Google books. Removing the connection between the locus and the virus would be as dubious as removing Wuhan from COVID-19 (or "Salem" from "witch trials') Please look for a consensus before reverting once more. Activist (talk)

@Activist: I have again reverted your unsourced edit. Perhaps I missed it but where in the source cited does it say "Provincetown became known early for a high incidence of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus"? The source says men with AIDS came there "to face that scourge". Also, "Why not seek out a place where they wouldn’t feel as isolated, where they could find support and compassion, where they didn’t need to hide? And so Provincetown filled with men whose vacation memories were joyful, who sought comfort and year-round refuge by being 'out' while sick." Please respond and do not edit war until this is resolved. (talk) 22:06, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Magnolia677 I'm not at all sure if there's anything I can show you that will possibly satisfy you, and I don't think it's because my edits were not factual. You've for the time being, at least, retained the location of the AIDS memorial, but you've left it as divorced, both physically and temporally, from the AIDS epidemic, much as the Holocaust Memorial is in D.C. rather than in Central Europe. The citation I'd included cites "thirty-odd years ago." So we've distinguished it in time just as we could have distinguished the "Final Solution" in central Europe in the '30s and '40s, and with a nexus in Germany, although there were camps in Poland (i.e. Auschwitz) and post-Anschluss Austria (i.e. Mauthausen), etc. During The AIDS Epidemic, the title of the KBUR piece, isn't referring to some unrelated incidences, but rather is tying those two facts together. Now Provincetown wasn't some arbitrary destination to which victims had transported the virus, like lepers exiled to Molokaʻi, but prominent (though hardly exclusive) to the epidemic. It had (and has) a history of tolerance dating back perhaps a century. So, here's still another citation that you will probably reject outright, but in case you don't, maybe you can write something coherent enough to draw the obvious and ironic parallels. Lastly, there may be over 1,000 cases that are traceable to the July 4th partying in P-Town, with epidemiologists speculating that it was likely caused by so many people dancing so close together in the presence of the extraordinarily transmissible Delta variant. (One likened it to chicken pox, in that respect. Not LGTBQ. Not sex. Dense, maskless proximity.) Activist (talk) 08:33, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Activist: Wikipedia does not accept original research. Please support your edits with reliable sources. Magnolia677 (talk) 09:35, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

References

"perhaps the best-known gay summer resort on the East Coast."

I've added a 'dubious' tag to this claim because, as a Midwesterner, that title would seem clearly to belong to Fire Island. But perhaps their relative renown is different within the region? Walkersam (talk) 23:38, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. In any case, such a statement is more travel-writing style than encyclopedic. Eric ^talk 08:47, 9 November 2022 (UTC)